A Riddle Within A Mystery

"A lab employee infected in the field while collecting samples in a bat cave -- such a scenario belongs both as a lab-leak hypothesis and as our first hypothesis of direct infection from bat to human. We've seen that hypothesis as a likely hypothesis."

"In the beginning, they didn't want anything about the lab [in the report], because it was impossible, so there was no need to waste time on that. We insisted on including it, because it was part of the whole issue about where the virus originated."

"It probably means there's a human error behind such an event, and they're not very happy to admit that. The whole system focuses a lot on being infallible, and everything must be perfect. Somebody could also wish to hide something. Who knows?"

"The politics was always in the room with us on the other side of the table."

Dr.Peter Ben Ebarek, head, World Health Organization Wuhan Virus Investigation

Peter Ben Embarek (center) and Marion Koopmans (right) say farewell to their Chinese counterpart Liang Wannian (left) after 9 February press conference to discuss the findings of a joint investigation into the pandemic’s origins. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

The original hypothesis brought to the investigative table by the members comprising the investigating team representing the World Health Organization was the likelihood of a Chinese scientist in the field becoming infected with a coronavirus directly from a bat while collecting bat samples. A supposition based on the likelihood of such an event occurring since it was a rational explanation; a zoonotic disease suddenly appearing for the first time, emerging out of such an encounter had been documented before, in other cases.

However, as Dr. Ben Embarek explained, this was an educated hypothesis that the Chinese with whom his team engaged as a proviso of their being permitted to conduct an investigation in China into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 which was first identified and linked to a live market in Wuhan, a city of teeming millions which also incidentally hosted two virus-investigative laboratories, one of which was highly restricted.

Danish television channel TV2 released a documentary this week evolving out of an interview with Dr. Ben Embarek who spoke of the "likely hypothesis" a lab employee at the Wuhan Institute of Virology might have been infected while working in the field. The Chinese researchers that had partnered with the WHO team in their investigation were not prepared to discuss such a scenario, insisting no possible link existed of the origins of the pandemic and a Wuhan research laboratory. 

 

A BAT CAVE in China's Guangxi province in 2004, Shi Zhengli releases a fruit bat after taking a blood sample. Credit: Shuyi Zhang

 

The WHO-China team's follow-up report at the conclusion of the joint investigation claimed it to have been "very unlikely" the virus might accidentally have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or any other facility in the city where the infections first emerged. No further investigation into the issue would be recommended by the joint research team. Whether to even include the lab-leak theory remained a thorn to the very end of the WHO team's stay in China.

By the time the mission concluded, Dr. Ben Embarek explained to Danish reporters that the Chinese counterparts of the investigative team finally came around to agreeing that a discussion might be in order "on the condition we didn't recommend any specific studies to further that hypothesis". As for the wording relating to the lab-leak theory of "extremely unlikely", Dr. Ben Embarek responded: "It was the category we chose to put it in at the end, yes"; at the same time it might have been categorized as possible, but simply unlikely.

 

A group of researchers prepare bat blood samples that they will screen for viruses and other pathogens. Credit: Shuyi Zhang

 

The head of the WHO team also suggested that "human error" might have been involved, but given the Chinese political system disallowing authorities to admit such a possibility, it had to be discarded. Dr. Ben Embarek collaborated with the documentary filmmakers by filming his China trip on his cellphone for an inside view of a closely-kept trip. As the leader of the team of international scientists whose mission to China was to work with local officials in the investigation of the pandemic origins, he obviously feels an obligation to the world community to disclose any and all possible links to the origins of the pandemic.

A pandemic, after all, that still roils the world; one which up to the present caused over 200 million confirmed infections and at the very least 4.3 million deaths globally. The WHO team members alluded to the immense pressure brought to bear on them throughout the duration of the trip, with up to 60 Chinese colleagues working with the scientists but also collaborating with Chinese public health figures.

 

And while WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has declared that a deeper, more thorough investigation should proceed to clear up the remaining mysteries over the pandemic's source, Chinese officials declared it to be "impossible" to welcome a further China-focused probe. They will not expose themselves to anything they cannot control the outcome of.

 

Credit: Richard Borge

"It’s now clear that during the second half of December [2019] there was wide circulation of the virus in Wuhan. The contribution of the market at that time was not so important anymore because the virus was also circulating elsewhere in the city. That, to me, is a big finding. That was not the picture we had before. The cases outside the market were showing differences in terms of [virus] sequence diversity. Whether that indicates multiple introductions to the city or a single introduction a little bit earlier, followed by spread in different parts of the city, is still unclear. But it all points towards an introduction in the human population in that area in the period October to early December 2019—most probably late November, not so long before the earliest cases were found. But the route of introduction remains a mystery."

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, head, WHO investigation into the genesis of the COVID-19 pandemic, February 2021 interview

The Origins of HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS

"During World War I, Germany had a number of colonies in Africa and the Allied forces decided to invade these colonies, one of which was Cameroon."

"Cameroon was invaded by a combination of British, Belgian and French soldiers from five directions. The soldiers spent three or four months in Moloundou before moving forward. When they were there, the main problem was not bullets from the enemy, but starvation."

"All of a sudden, you have 1,600 soldiers with rifles and plenty of ammunition, so the level of hunting in that area went up dramatically over these few months [in 1916].

"My hypothesis is that one of the soldiers got infected while hunting in the forest. A chimpanzee was killed and when cutting the animal to bring it back, there was an injury which got infected with the virus."

"Eventually the soldier, after the war, came back all the way to Leopoldville and probably started the very first train of transmission in Leopoldville itself."

Jacques Pepin, professor, Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Sherbrooke, Quebec

Professor Jacques Pepin says soldiers would have hunted chimps (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

 

AIDS has been responsible for the death of over 32 million people globally. No vaccine has yet been developed for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Treatments are available that have the effect of reducing the severity of symptoms and to prevent transmission of the virus. Despite which in 2019 alone, 1.7 million people became infected with HIV. In that same year 38 million people globally were living with the virus, which has over time infected over 75 million worldwide since the epidemic began, according to UN AIDS.

Now, Professor Pepin who in 2011 published a book where he described the manner in which simian immunodeficiency virus occurring in chimpanzees crossed he species barrier to humans, causing AIDS. At that time he theorized that a native hunter in all likelihood was vulnerable to infection through a cut he had sustained and thus became the first person to have become infected with HIV. The professor has since, however, rethought his hypothesis and has arrived at a similar conclusion with a different scenario.

In publishing a new edition of his well-recognized book, Professor Pepin has set aside the "cut hunter" for what he considers to be a more likely event that relates to a "cut soldier". And as he now tells it, Patient Zero was one among 1,600 Belgian and French soldiers who had been dispatched to travel up the Congo River from Leopoldville capital of the Belgian colony (now Kinshasa, Congo), to arrive at Moloundou, a remote outpost in Cameroon. It is interesting to note that studies had previously identified the town as the probable site of the first infection of HIV.

The indigenous people located there were known to live off casava root along with other crops and bushmeat. The soldiers relied on food supplied to them from Leopoldville and Brazzaville, ferried up the Congo River, then carried overland up to 25 miles by foot through the local people. The problem was insufficient supplies reaching the soldiers who began suffering from malnutrition, some of whom died of starvation, convincing those left that their salvation lay in hunting for themselves.

 

Chimpanzees in the jungle of southern Liberia. Photo by ZOOM DOSSO/AFP/Getty Images

 

HIV spread gradually when the soldiers on the conclusion of the war returned to Leopoldville. The spread of the disease was doubtless hastened by hospitals making re-use of needles previously used, in reflection of medical equipment shortages. By the early 1950s an estimated 500 infections resulted. A decade on, the population of the city grew rapidly and as it did, the sex trade boomed and the virus took full advantage.

"Every year prostitutes would have up to 1,500 clients. That was perfect for the sexual amplification of HIV between these high-volume sex workers and their clients", explained Professor Pepin.

Eventually, the virus spread to Haiti, then was exported to the United States, in time spreading onward to Western Europe. And the history of the scourge of human immunodefiency virus shook the global community with the onset of a vicious deadly disease first identified among the gay populations of the world, but did not remain confined to gays, rapidly spreading within heterosexual communities where millions became infected and died slow, painful, gruesome, unstoppable deaths.

More than 33 million people have died from AIDS related illnesses (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Origins of COVID Under WHO Investigation in China

"My understanding is in fact there is no limit in accessing information we might need for the team."

"We will see. We are not in China yet."

Hung Nguyen, Vietnamese biologist

"What we would like to do with the international team and counterparts in China is to go back in the Wuhan environment, re-interview in-depth the initial cases, try to find other cases that were not detected at that time and try to see if we can push back the history of the first cases."

Peter Ben Embarek, WHO expert on animal diseases crossing species barrier

 

"We are looking for the answers here that may save us in future — not culprits and not people to blame."

"[The WHO is willing to go] anywhere and everywhere."

World Health Organization top emergency expert, Mike Ryan 

 

"At this stage what I think we need is a very open mind when trying to step back into the events that led eventually to this pandemic."

Marion Koopmans, virologist, Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands 

 

A worker in protective coverings directs members of the World Health Organization team on their arrival at the airport in Wuhan, in central China's Hubei province, on Thursday. (Ng Han Guan/The Associated Press)

An earlier attempt by WHO experts who set out to investigate the origins, extent and the host country's initial realization they were dealing with a novel coronavirus and the information they shared with the World Health Organization, resulted in a disappointing setback when members of the team were denied authorization by China to enter the country to fulfill the function they were dispatched by the world  health body to accomplish. At the time WHO chief Tetros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had voiced his disappointment and China responded that there had been a 'misunderstanding'.

 

That misunderstanding appears now to have been settled and the WHO team of expert investigators set off once again -- comprised of global scientists, experts in their field -- to investigate the novel coronavirus origins, planning to spend a month in the city of Wuhan. Just having arrived now, their first two weeks will be spent in quarantine. Before their arrival, Hung Nguyen, speaking via video-call from Singapore said the ten-member team did not expect to encounter any restrictions to their movements nor access to vital investigation sites.

 

They were preparing at that point to fly from Singapore to Wuhan. The end result of their investigation would presumably put to rest the skepticism voiced by the governments of the United States and Australia, to mention several of the more prominent voices demanding answers of Beijing. China has been accused of screening the extent of the initial outbreak leading to calls for a transparent investigation led by the WHO in the wake of criticisms of the terms by which experts in China conducted their research during the SARS-CoV-2 virus's initial entrance. 

The group arrived late in the morning from Singapore and was expected to head into two weeks of quarantine. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Dr.Hung explained in a media interview that the WHO team  had conducted regular virtual meetings for discussions with their Chinese virus-expert counterparts, taking place over the months before the team embarked on their trip to China. Once their period of quarantine had lapsed, the team planned to spend the following two weeks in interviews with people from research institutes, hospitals and from the seafood market in Wuhan where the pathogen was believed to have first emerged and began its spread, eventually appearing everywhere across the globe.

Dr.Hung's expertise is in the field of food safety risks arising from wet markets, whose existence is common throughout Asia and parts of Africa. He is himself based in Kenya, and he was chosen to take part in the investigative mission taking advantage of his training and experience. China has pushed back against international criticism as the crucible of yet another malignant virus that managed to leap the species gap between animals and humans; bats and pangolins considered to be vectors. Pangolins happen to be the most trafficked wild-animal species found in wet markets.

China has its own narrative of the novel coronavirus origins; that it was brought to China, not that it originated in China. Its state media has been expressing and promulgating a home-grown narrative of the virus being present in imported frozen food packaging from abroad. That it was present in 2019 in Europe. China being made a scapegoat for something it was not at all responsible for. And China has produced scientific papers featuring those claims. 

 

Before the WHO delegation of experts left for China they underwent COVID-19 tests in their countries of origin and then again in Singapore, all negative, which cleared them all for travel. On arrival in China additional, more complex tests were taken that showed two members of the delegation had bloodstream antibodies to COVID, and they were denied entry. 

 

Nucleic acid tests were negative but two of the members had coronavirus antibodies. "They are being retested for both IgM and IgG antibodies", explained the WHO. "Relevant epidemic prevention and control requirements and regulations will be strictly enforced", noted Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a briefing update Thursday responding to a question about the two team members.

People wearing face masks walk in a street market in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicentre of China's novel coronavirus disease, in April 2020. The WHO team, which landed Thursday, will spend two weeks interviewing people from research institutes, hospitals and the Wuhan seafood market market where the new pathogen is believed to have emerged. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Plate Tectonics and the Origins of Life on Earth

"If there wasn't a way of recycling material between mantle and crust [of the evolving Earth], all these elements that are crucial to life, like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and oxygen, would get tied up in rocks and stay there."
Aubrey Zerkle, geochemist, University of St.Andrews, Scotland

"Think about what drives evolution. It's isolation and competition. You need to break continents and continental shelves apart, and separate one ocean from another, for speciation to occur."
Robert Stern, geoscientist, University of Texas, Dallas

"The prevailing view is that Earth started to exhibit behaviors that look like plate tectonics 2.5 to 3 billion years ago."
Michael Brown, geologist, University of Maryland

A cross section of the Earth, showing the exterior crust, the molten mantle beneath it and the core at the center of the planet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Université Paris Diderot – Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris

Plate Tectonics is the supposition that the outer shell of Planet Earth is broken into pieces, or plates that glide over a belt of hot, weak rock; in some areas rising from the underlying mantle and in others plunging back into the mantle; a geological consruct that describes the structure and behavior of the Earth: mountains and ocean canyons, earthquakes and volcanoes, inclusive of the composition of the air we breathe sustaining life.

It was only in the mid-20th Century that the theory of "continental drift" became generally accepted when evidence was unearthed of a 'subterranean engine' directing continental deviations. It was at that time that geologists determined Earth's outer layer to be broken into eight or nine large pieces along with five or six smaller segments resulting in a mixture of relatively thin, dense oceanic plates riding low while thicker, lighter continental plates bobbed above.

Lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has destroyed dozens of homes in the past month. The volcano is the result of the same deep-mantle hot spot that formed the Hawaiian island chain.  USGS

Melting rock from the underlying mantle rises up at large fissures on the ocean floor, steadily increasing the oceanic plates while at other fracture points in the crust, oceanic plates dive back inside or alternately, in the process of subducting become absorbed into the hot belly of the mantle.

Jun Korenaga, a geophysicist at Yale University and others of his colleagues contend that plate tectonics was initiated directly after the crust of the Earth solidified. "That is when the conditions would have been easiest for plate tectonics to get started", he asserts. Most of the water on Earth would at that point be on the surface, little having found its way into the mantle.

The Silfra fissure in Iceland forms part of the boundary between the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. The two plates drift about 2 centimeters farther apart every year.  Photo: Charlie Jung

Heat convecting up through the mantle, exerting a stronger force on dry rocks than on lubricated rocks occurred at the same time as surface water would ease the process whereby hot, twisting rocks beneath cracked the surface lid apart a process which Dr. Korenaga feels represents the key in starting the subduction engine in its mighty transformative action.

This theory is not, however, generally accepted by all geophysicists in the field, by any means. Basically, three camps exist, all sparring over when the entire movable plate system began; whether it is as ancient as the planet; roughly 4.5 billion years old; or perhaps merely one billion years or some other, younger, starting point?

The question is, basically, what was it that caused the shell to crack apart to begin with. And from there it follows that the second key question to be answered is how the recycling of the crust of the Earth then began. A link between plate tectonics and the evolution of complex life appears tantalizingly connected.

The hypothesis has been raised that continental collisions and crashing mountains could very well have unearthed crucial nutrients at specific moments of biological inventiveness in nature's great scheme of creation. A process that loosened the vital chemical ingredients, enabling them to ferment together in a stew creating the basic elements of primal lifeforms.

Robert Stern argues that plate tectonics, on the other hand, is a natural occurrence in Earth's evolution of a mere billion years in age, perhaps less; that Earth's first 3.5 billion years had a "single lid" serving as an outer shell, a crust riddled with volcanoes and mountains but no moving plates. And then there is the group of geologists who make do with a middle ground decoupling plate tectonics from the origins of life on Earth.

Scientists consider plate tectonics vital to the sustained evolution of primordial life where evidence of the earliest single-celled organisms date back over 3.6-billion years. As the theory goes, the activity of plate tectonics maintained a constant supply of water shuttling between mantle and crust instead of gradually evaporating from the surface.

A process that blocked dangerous buildup of greenhouse gases through subducting the excess carbon underground. The process disturbed mountains and pulverized rocks, loosening essential minerals and nutrients such as phosphorus, oxygen and nitrogen to be used in nature's laboratory petri dish production of life.

Plate tectonics may have helped facilitate the development of life on Earth. Image credit: NASA.